Starting a new quilt

We have had an amazing past few days here in Manhattan!  It's almost December, and we should be getting whacked with snow right about now...but I'm not complaining!  Spent the morning preparing for and doing an audition for an opera for next season.  Auditions are always a bit nerve-wracking, but my daughter was sick this morning, and I would have MUCH preferred staying home and playing with her than traipsing to Midtown to bear my vocal soul for 8 minutes, but momma's gotta eat, right?
Anyhow, I am loving doing my disappearing 9 patch Christmas quilt!  After my freestyle log cabin, where I was constantly going back and forth between cutting mat, sewing machine, and ironing board, this project is flying by!  Even better, the bulk of my 5x5 squares are drawn from Summerfield Quilt's Christmas charm swap, so the cutting's done!

 This is my first fabric swap, and I really love sitting down and doing some cutting, then a few weeks later getting a pile of surprise fabrics all ready to go!  True, I don't love every square, but this is going to be a very ecclectic piece, so I did my best at matching up each 8 patch group with the gold stripe middle square.  My basic pattern is darker squares in the 4 corners and lighter squares in between.  Unfortunately, there are lots of in-betweeners in the bunch, so some squares adhere better to the plan (9 patch below) than others (9 patch above).

I am, for the first time, ironing my seams open- looks neater and feels less bulky.  Maybe I should say that my seams are getting ironed open.  My wife is doing some ironing for me, so this project is progressing at warp speed for me, which is so exciting!  She did the hand-sewn bindings on my first few projects, but since discovering machine binding, I might do that to save time and meet my deadlines.